Weather

We really are having a most miserable June.  The TV news is all about poor people whose homes have been flooded.  What a terrible thing!  Apparently the Gulf Stream has once again changed course and moved along the South coast bringing rain and misery in its wake.  Yesterday Amanda volunteered to drive the relatives of a friend to his wife's funeral.  They set off from Hove to go to Bournemouth.  The journey was a nightmare.  Having driven through torrential downpours, floodwater and joined long slow moving traffic queues after three hours they had only reached Chichester and realised that they would be much too late for the funeral so decided reluctantly to return home.  Five hours driving, going nowhere!

When we lived in Sandgate on the coast I often grumbled at carrying the shopping up a very steep hill but when the village was flooded, as it often was at the equinox, I was glad of the raised position of our house.  The former coastguard cottages on the seafront were often inundated.  Sometimes the waves were so high the water went over the roof and down the chimney.   I once visited one of my husband's staff who lived in one of these cottages and found everything standing in water.  The teenage son's only problem seemed to be that the TV aerial had been swept away.